Method and system for designing a data market experiment

Abstract

An apparatus and a method for designing a data market experiment given a fixed budget and a set of potential subjects for the experiment are described. An experimenter human subject, or any other kind of experiment through which it collects data, and can incentivize the participation of subjects in the experiment through monetary compensation. The experimenter observes some publicly known information about the subjects, as well as the money each potential subject requests to participate in the experiment. Based on this information, the method determines which users to pay, and how much, to participate in the experiment. The method views experimental design in a strategic setting, by studying mechanism design issues, such as incentivizing users to report a truthful value for their data. The method has the following properties of being budget feasible, computationally tractable, nearly-optimal, and truthful in that the subjects have no incentive to declare desired compensations that are untruthful.

1 . A method of selecting subjects from which to gather data from a set of potential subjects, comprising:
 accessing a vector of features of at least one subject, comprising a cost of the at least one subject to participate;   receiving a budget describing a cost to spend for the subjects;   computing a value for each member of the set of potential subjects to determine the highest value member of the set and adding this member to a list of subjects to participate;   performing convex optimization on subjects in the set, other than the highest value member of the set, to determine a threshold;   comparing said threshold to said computed value to determine whether said computed value exceeds said threshold, and if so,   assigning compensation to the at least one subject with the entire budget, and if said computed value does not exceed said threshold,   assigning portions of said budget proportionally to subjects added to the list of subjects to participate in increasing order of their marginal contribution to value for participating, until said budget is exhausted.   
     
     
         2 . The method of  claim 1 , wherein said vector of features comprises age and gender. 
     
     
         3 . The method of  claim 1 , wherein said value is the D-optimality criterion. 
     
     
         4 . The method of  claim 1 , wherein said second assigning step comprises iteratively adding one subject at a time to the list of subjects to participate. 
     
     
         5 . The method of  claim 4 , wherein the subject added at each iteration has the greatest ratio of value to cost to participate in the experiment. 
     
     
         6 . An apparatus, comprising:
 one or more processors for selecting subjects from which to gather data from a set of potential subjects, collectively configured to:
 access a vector of features of at least one subject, comprising a cost of the at least one subject to participate; 
 receive a budget describing a cost to spend for the subjects; 
 compute a value for each member of the set of potential subjects to determine the highest value member of the set and adding this member to a list of subjects to participate; 
 perform convex optimization on subjects in the set other than the highest value member of the set to determine a threshold; 
 compare said threshold to said computed value to determine whether said computed value exceeds said threshold, and if so, 
   assign compensation to the at least one subject with the entire budget, and if said computed value does not exceed said threshold,   assign portions of said budget proportionally to subjects added to the list of subjects to participate in increasing order of their marginal contribution to value for participating, until said budget is exhausted.   
     
     
         7 . The apparatus of  claim 6 , wherein said vector of features comprises age and gender. 
     
     
         8 . The apparatus of  claim 6 , wherein said value is the D-optimality criterion. 
     
     
         9 . The apparatus of  claim 6 , wherein said second assigning step comprises iteratively adding one subject at a time to the the list of subjects to participate. 
     
     
         10 . The apparatus of  claim 9 , wherein the subject added at each iteration has the greatest ratio of value to cost to participate in the experiment. 
     
     
         11 . The method of  claim 1 , wherein the subjects are selected to participate in an experiment. 
     
     
         12 . The method of  claim 1 , wherein the subjects are selected to participate in a market survey. 
     
     
         13 . The method of  claim 1 , wherein the subjects are selected to participate in a medical research study. 
     
     
         14 . The apparatus of  claim 6 , wherein the subjects are selected to participate in an experiment. 
     
     
         15 . The apparatus of  claim 6 , wherein the subjects are selected to participate in a market survey. 
     
     
         16 . The apparatus of  claim 6 , wherein the subjects are selected to participate in a medical research study.